ALLUSION

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does allusion mean? 

• ALLUSION (noun)
  The noun ALLUSION has 1 sense:

1. passing reference or indirect mention

  Familiarity information: ALLUSION used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ALLUSION (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Passing reference or indirect mention

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Hypernyms ("allusion" is a kind of...):

mention; reference (a remark that calls attention to something or someone)

Derivation:

allude (make a more or less disguised reference to)

 Context examples 

Holmes made no further allusion to the matter that day, though he sat lost in thought for a long time after our belated dinner.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I understand your allusion, my love.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Why, too, should he faint at an allusion to the half-effaced initials upon his arm, and die of fright when he had a letter from Fordingbridge?

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Ah, and what did you gather from this allusion to a band—a speckled band?

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

They lost their tempers easily and called one another names, while oaths and obscene allusions were frequent on their lips.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

His brow clouded at the allusion.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Throughout there was a strange bitterness; an absence of consolatory gentleness; stern allusions to Calvinistic doctrines—election, predestination, reprobation—were frequent; and each reference to these points sounded like a sentence pronounced for doom.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

This artful allusion to benefits conferred brought Tupman to his feet, looking as if he had quite made up his mind.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

In not one of all my clever replies, my delicate negatives, is there any allusion to making a sacrifice.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

Every thought that was devoted to it was an extreme anguish, and every word that I spoke in allusion to it caused my lips to quiver, and my heart to palpitate.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)